The Ghost in the Mirror: Not Everything is a Mirror
I’ve recently been deeply reconsidering certain beliefs that I’ve held within my personal spirituality. As someone who is highly energetically sensitive, being in new age and spiritual group spaces can be overwhelming, irritating, and frustrating. Often, people speak in so much jargon or vague terms that I really feel like someone may be speaking, but nothing is really being said. And, with Venus moving into Taurus, it feels like much of what I’ve been working through is finally processing through my body. When it comes to language, I get twitchy when someone speaks something that just doesn’t ring as authentic or clear. My body tenses, and like a dog with a bone, I have to chew and chew until finally I release it. I blame–and bless–my Moon in Scorpio, my tuning-fork of truth, for this particular habit.
The phrase, “Everything is a mirror” has never quite sat well with me. I’ve heard it often enough, and I’ve been really digging into the unconscious beliefs and patterns that are rolled into that statement. Here’s why that idea can be pretty problematic:
It removes nuance.
Frankly, not everything is about you. Sometimes, people are just revealing who they are, and not necessarily, what you “still need to heal”. If someone chooses to act harmfully–or continues to–then it’s okay to say, “That was harmful and not okay”.
I like to personally define harmful behavior as a series of actions and words that do not respect our rights as an individual sovereign being. Harm is not just about “bad vibes” or “low frequency.” It’s about actions, words, and patterns that:
Instill fear
Induce shame
Manipulate through guilt
Erode self-trust
Ignore or violate consent
Undermine your clarity, autonomy, or safety
This is not “just your mirror.” This is spiritual disrespect at the level of personal sovereignty. It’s not that doing the inner work isn’t important, but it should never be used to justify harm or denying your right to safety, clarity and truth. If it doesn’t pass the sniff test, I’m not going to participate or accept it. I know this can feel confronting if you’ve spent a long time in spiritual communities that emphasize personal responsibility over shared accountability; however, I believe truth and care can coexist because this is the truth that set me free.
It reinforces victim blaming.
If everything really is a mirror, then suddenly, no one has to ever be responsible for their choices or actions. Suddenly, free will has no value because clearly, it’s our fault that someone betrayed, abused, violated or manipulated us. We didn’t do enough yoga or sit in the sweat lodge long enough to finally purify ourselves of all that nasty, icky low vibe energy.
No: This is spiritualized gaslighting. Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation designed to make you doubt your own perception, memory or reality in order to control you and avoid any accountability or responsibility. When it comes to gaslighting, you might hear people say:
“That never happened.”
“You’re overreacting.”
“You’re too sensitive.”
“You’re remembering it wrong.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
The whole point of this behavior is to undermine your self-trust, so you can no longer recognize harm. It’s the worst sort of manipulative tactic because our own relationship with ourselves is the most important relationship any of us will ever have. Am I a good steward to myself? Have I given myself the love, nurturing, guidance and support I need to thrive? If our own internal sense of self-trust has been eroded, then our own ability to exercise our agency, our ability to choose, becomes debilitated. It’s a difficult and painful situation to be in, but you can change your life because it doesn’t have to be this way. At all points, we can reconnect to our own inner power and choose differently. If any of this sounds familiar to you, I absolutely urge you to seek professional help.
In the context of new age and spiritual spaces, people will use these same tactics that allow individuals to dismiss harm, shift blame, force forgiveness, deny feelings, collapse boundaries, control behavior, and preserve spiritual hierarchies or communities that feel “safe”—but only for the powerful. This is dangerous because it makes the victim of the harm seem like the source of the problem—all the while the person causing the harm is not held accountable for the impact of their actions. You might hear people say things like:
“You’re triggered — that’s your shadow.”
“If you were more healed, this wouldn’t bother you.”
“You attracted this for a reason — what are you supposed to learn?”
“This is a reflection of your own inner wounds.”
“Everything is love — why are you bringing in negativity?”
“That’s just your ego talking.”
“You’re creating separation.”
“A spiritual person wouldn’t feel that way.”
“Don’t give it energy — just stay high vibe.”
And here’s where I get mad, if something painful or harmful happened, then you have the right to name it. No one gets to take that choice from you.
It erases the truth of spiritual interception. Spiritual interception can be seen as non-consensual energetic activity, where someone bypasses your ability to say “yes” or “no” before acting, offering, diagnosing or intervening on your behalf. Most often I’ve seen where this behavior is generally unconscious. It can manifest when people mistake their anxiety for intuition, offer help to feel valuable rather than actually serve, or have a hard time respecting the autonomy or process of other individuals. Below are some examples of unconscious attempts at spiritual interception.
The unsolicited healer:
“I felt your energy and cleared your throat chakra last night — hope that’s okay!”
The over-helpful intuitive:
“I just know what’s going on with you — let me tell you what Spirit is saying.”
The projector:
“You’re clearly going through a Dark Night of the Soul because that’s what I went through at your stage.”
The spiritual bypasser:
“I know you’re hurting, but you really need to focus on gratitude. There’s a lesson here for you.”
The energetic volunteer without invitation:
“I meditated on your behalf. I didn’t ask — I just knew you needed it.”
What happens in these moments is that one person is essentially saying, “I have access to you whether or not you invited me.” In the south, this often sounds like, “I’ll pray for you, honey.” Cue the cosmic eye-rolling—but okay, I know how to transmute that energy to serve my growth. Anyways, this situation forces you, as the receiver, into a position where you have to decide:
Are you going to accept something you didn’t ask for?
Are you willing to risk being seen as ungrateful, defensive or unspiritual if you reject it?
Are you willing to absorb the cost of someone else’s projection?
There are rare cases where spiritual interception is being consciously done, and there are certainly people who conflate power with spiritual superiority and punish others when their perceived position and power is threatened. Again, these are rare, but they exist, which means it’s our personal responsibility to become mature in our spirituality in order to clearly perceive when it’s happening, without excusing or attacking.
Spiritual interception can also include parasitic patterns, which are maladaptive strategies and behaviors that stem from massive, unintegrated trauma. If trauma is a rupture point in our psyche, then the parasitic patterns are what people do as a response to carrying that energy, which can often look like:
Deflection disguised as spiritual insight
Entitlement dressed up as vulnerability
Emotional hunger masquerading as divine purpose
Control hiding inside connection
Parasitic patterns often start as a survival mechanism, but when the environment shifts and the individual is no longer in dangerous conditions, those strategies become maladaptive and harmful to themselves and others. Instead of healing, it mutates into a method of getting energy, attention, or control from others — especially from people who carry light, clarity, or compassion. It’s generally subtle, not inherently evil, but it’s not your job to carry or sustain. Recognizing these patterns and strategies within ourselves and others can help us to clarify our energy, to clean up our act and show up as the mature sovereign beings that we are.
Nowadays, I make sure I take a pause and consider the following reframe, “Everything is either a mirror, a message, or a misalignment—what is this?”
A mirror reflects something active within you, but only in the context that it helps you feel empowered because you can recognize it without becoming consumed or shamed by it.
A message provides you insight from Source about your direction, where you’re heading, what you need, or maybe need to let go. Messages from Source are never coded with fear, shame, or guilt.
A misalignment reveals where things are incongruent, where your thoughts, words, and deeds aren’t aligned to who you are–and what no longer belongs in your life. It highlights where a square peg is trying to fit in a round hole in your life.
I wonder, where have you been asked to take responsibility for someone else’s violation of your boundaries? And how would your life improve if you didn’t? You’d be surprised just how often this happens, but when you start recognizing it, you can start choosing to respond differently.
Sometimes, the most powerful thing any of us can do is to clearly say, no. At the highest level of creation we are all absolutely one, but we chose to come into this human incarnation. We chose to experience separation. We chose to dance the tension of the blade’s edge between the individual self and cosmic All-That-Is. Part of my own journey has been really deeply clarifying my own language, my inner blueprint, and no, not everything is a mirror. Sometimes, it’s an opportunity to transmute filth into fertilizer for the soul.